What about The Rust? Just Rust sounds more like a soap opera than something corrupt and vile. Iíve had the problem with too many wild-west influences since thatís the only piece of american mythology our group shares. I always try put in some Fallout or Gamma World stuff as well as rockabilly stuff (after reading that Steven King series I fiercly believe Chtuluesque stuff and rockabilly goes better together than ever Lovecraftís now) but since it isnít shared by the whole group it doesnít catch on as well as the wild-west stuff.

Marshall, every thing you need to know about the real region of the Rust Belt you can get from Billy Joel's "Allen Town".

To summarize: The heyday of the steel industry where hardworking hard drinking men could make seriously good money with barely a highschool education at their pick of sweet union manufacturing jobs stretching from central Pennsylvania through Ohio and into Michigan. Then...the Industrial Age ended with the recessions of the 70s and early 80s, the mills and factories closed down and when American recovered in the mid to late 80s you had lots of hard working men lacking the qualifications to find a good job in the new Service Age and those industrial era manufacturing boom towns all went bust leaving empty mills and factories slowly rusting away.

That's it. No big amount of research required. Like Lance, I initially thought your game was actually intentially a metaphor for exactly that and really like the fact it was called Rust Belt. Rust is just as good as a name, but I had no problem with Rust Belt. And if people start talking and squabbling over it...good...

Because irrationally sticking to your guns against all comers is such a damned Rustbelt thing to do.

Yeeeup!

Dude, seriously though. Ralph said what I meant, only better. I went through a similar naming crisis with a couple of my projects, and eventually stuck with what I'd originally chosen. My third project will probably hit even worse barriers of assumption that you're worrying about. I mean, seriously.. Who, seeing the title "Rats in the Walls" isn't going to assume that it's a game about Lovecraftian horrors, unless like me at the time, they've never read the story? Rest assured that the chances of any disenfranchised people who wanted to play a game about how hard it is to be laid off from the steel mill being disappointed by your game are pretty slim. I mean, you *can* play such a story, and it would totally fit in The Rustbelt.

...you know... Nevermind. Such speculation is for another thread, or better yet, when I've got the game in front of me and players interested in playing.

Think of your lack of Rustbelt lore as being like one of those times that the players assume your big mysterious plot is actually something much cooler than it is. When a player comes to you and tells you this awesome story about steel-workers fighting their way through the rustbelt and giving in to addiction and doing unconscionable things, you can say "Yes, that's exactly what I had planned for this game all along" and you won't even be lying.

For whatever it's worth, Ralph and Lance are convincing me. It's not a democracy or consensus-issue, but especially if some little bit of text were in there that started the Rust in that region ... geez, that actually puts a shiver up my spine.

I dig that too. Even just a hint of the story behind how the name has changed in meaning over time could be cool. "Old folks say 'the Rust Belt' used to mean X, and some claim that even before that it meant Y..."